Went in to Rouge today in Van Nuys CA. They have a special on Mondays for half-price dances. This means nude dances which are normally $40 each were $20 each. Sounds good, righ?. But wait a minute (and I mean an MINUTE!), there's a catch. This club (which is owned by Spearmint Rhino) seems to cheat the half off deal by only playing songs for one minute. I timed several after I realized they just seemed to short.
Now I've been a SC fan since the early 80's, and I've seen this trend for shorter songs develop over the last 10-15 years and I'm tired of it. Let's do the math:
"Normal" songs (in the Los Angeles Area) used to run 2 to 3 minutes and maybe up to 4-5 minutes in some clubs. At 3 minutes for $20, that's a whopping $400 an hour for entertainment - excluding any tips for good service, extras, etc.
At $20 for one minute, that's a ridiculous $1,200 an HOUR! This is truly a deceptive practice by the cub, offering what appears to be a 50% discount on dances on what might be a "slow day" (there were only 3 other PL's in the club at 2 pm) BUT in reality, charging a 3x premium on time with the dancers.
My solution: I almost never buy dances by the song any more. I will try to always buy a 15 minute, 30 minute or 60 minute dance, depending on the price, the club, and most importantly the girl. The only exceptions come when:
- I don't know the girl and can't quite tell from talking to her how much she's willing to work with me the VIP. In that case, I might buy one song only as a test drive. If I don't get at least a bit of NASCAR, we're done and I move on to the next girl.
- Clubs like Deja Vu North Hollywood where the dances are controlled by a timed meter and the actual song length is irrelevant. There is a danger here too, of course, as the club can easily change the time allocated to each metered unit. I'm sure they do this on their $10 dance day (Mondays), but I have not timed it. In general, my experiences with Deja Vu so far have been good, but it's not a club known for consistently high mileage or significant extras.
Anyone else see this happening? Any ideas on other strategies or alternatives? I get that the girls are making less in this economy and so are the clubs, but you can't just raise your prices out of a recession. The obvious solution is to take my $300+ dollars an hour and just hire a pro in the privacy of my home. But that's a different board. :P
-The Cat
I agree with you on the Rouge club and the DVNOHO club as well. I stopped going to Rouge even though I have met a couple of great dancers there, also because they took out the 3 song nude dance rooms in the back, you could have lots of fun back there. DV in NoHo is a great value on Monday's for the $10 dances and on Thursday's for the $100 30min rooms.